COUPLE, BABY UNITED AFTER KIDNAPPING

A West Palm Beach couple were reunited with their 5-month-old daughter Tuesday, 30 hours after the baby was kidnapped by a woman who had asked to hold the infant, police said.

Officers said Marilyn Paul, 19, was carrying the baby, Tiffany, when she turned herself in to Metro-Dade police at Miami International Airport shortly before noon on Tuesday. She had just stepped off a Bahamas Air flight from Nassau, said West Palm Beach Police Sgt. Guillermo Perez.

"I thought I'd never see her again," said a relieved and joyous Annette White, Tiffany's mother. "I was going out of my mind."

Police charged Paul with kidnapping Tiffany from the Whites' home in the 800 block of Iris Street, Perez said. The offense is punishable by as much as life imprisonment.

Steven and Annette White said Paul asked to hold their child while she made a phone call, then walked off and never returned.

Paul is a Nassau resident but often visited a friend who lived in the Whites' apartment complex, said Annette White, 26. During the past few months, Paul developed a strong affection for Tiffany, she said.

After interviewing Paul, Perez said: "She had formed an attachment to the child. She said she didn't know why she did it but just decided to take the child with her (to the Bahamas)."

Annette White said, "She was always coming over to see Tiffany. She'd ask us for pictures and want to hold her. I think she was obsessed with her."

But the Whites said they never suspected the obsession would lead to an abduction.

"She didn't seem like the type who would do something like that," Annette White said.

At 11:15 a.m. Monday, Paul dropped by the Whites' apartment to visit. Annette White said Paul comes from a wealthy family in the Bahamas and often spends weekends and holidays visiting a friend in West Palm Beach.

Steven White said he was reluctant to let Paul take Tiffany with her when she left to make a telephone call.

"I told her Tiffany had to take a nap," he said. "But she kept begging us. She said, 'Please, please, please. I'll only be gone three minutes.' Finally, I said OK."

White, 36, said he became suspicious minutes after Paul left with Tiffany. He said he ran outside and checked several public telephones in the area, but Tiffany and Paul were nowhere to be seen.

"That's when I knew I was in trouble," he said.

White called police. Then he and his wife waited for news.

Detectives suspected Paul would head for the Bahamas, where she works for an insurance company, said Capt. James Diggs.

"We contacted Palm Beach International Airport and asked to be notified if a woman with a young child bought a ticket for the Bahamas," Diggs said. "We later learned that a passenger named M. Paul had flown out of Miami on Eastern Airlines at 6 p.m."

Police suspect Paul drove to Miami in a rented 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass with a middle-age man and two women.

Police said Tiffany was unharmed. Perez drove to Miami to pick up Tiffany and Paul.

"Once she got (to the Bahamas) she had second thoughts and decided to come back," Perez said.

He said Paul told him she stayed up all night Monday and left the Bahamas on a 9:40 a.m. flight Tuesday.

Lt. John Conklin described her as composed, very cooperative and very polite.

"She's not what we call a hardened criminal," he said.

White said he thought the abduction was well-planned. "She had this planned to a T," White said.

White, who works for Yellow Cab in West Palm Beach, said the daylong ordeal taught him at least one lesson.

"The next person who wants to hold Tiffany is going to fill out an application," he said.